As Tax Day approaches, millions of people are using tax software, such as TurboTax, to prepare their tax returns. But what if you make a legal error on your tax return as a result of the tax preparation software? Under current law, the legal liability for the error is directly on you - the taxpayer.

In her new work, Susan Morse proposes to fundamentally change the way regulatory law is enforced. She proposes government-to-robot enforcement. Specifically, Morse argues that an automated law system, which is any machine that produces a legal determination, should be held directly liable for compliance errors made by its users. Therefore, if you use TurboTax to prepare your taxes and you correctly input your facts, but the system produces a return that understates your tax liability, you would not be directly liable for this error. Instead, if the error is discovered, the IRS would pursue enforcement against and impose liabilities directly on TurboTax.

Sixty tax law professors and economists filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court Monday urging the Justices to overrule the Dormant Commerce Clause holding of Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992), which bars states from enforcing sales taxes against retailers who lack a "physical presence" in the state. From the brief:

In Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, the Court emphasized that its dormant Commerce Clause analysis was based on “structural concerns about the effect of state regulation on the national economy.” 504 U.S. 298, 312 (1992). The Court was especially concerned about the effect of taxation on the mail-order industry, and it believed that maintaining the physical presence rule would “foster[] investment by businesses and individuals.” Id. at 315-18. It also believed that its rule would reduce compliance costs for businesses and individuals engaged in commerce across state lines. See id. at 313 n.6. For those reasons, the Court reaffirmed the physical presence rule first announced in National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Illinois, 386 U.S. 753 (1967).